9 police are killed as troops open fire

Soldiers fired on unarmed police in East Timor's capital Thursday, killing nine and wounding 27, as international troops landed to try to end the fighting that threatens to push the country closer to civil war.

Among the wounded were two United Nations police advisers, part of U.N. staff trying to end an hourlong attack by soldiers on the national police headquarters in Dili, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in New York. The army accuses the police of being allied with a band of about 600 dismissed soldiers.

The U.N. police and military advisers negotiated a cease-fire with the Timorese soldiers, under which the police officers were to surrender their weapons and leave the building, Dujarric said. "As the unarmed police were being escorted out, army soldiers opened fire on them, killing nine and wounding 27 others, including two U.N. police advisers," he said.

Sudanese cross-border raiders have massacred more than 100 villagers in Chad, Human Rights Watch alleged Thursday, expressing concern the violence in Darfur was spreading.

Survivors told the New York-based group that the massacre was carried out last month by the Janjaweed — ethnic Arab militia Sudan's government is accused of unleashing on ethnic African villages where Darfur rebels might find support.

The Sudanese government denies backing the Janjaweed, but agreed to rein them in under a May 5 peace agreement. Violence has only increased since the government and the main rebel movement signed the accord. Sudan said Thursday it would permit the U.N. to lay the groundwork for possible deployment of a peacekeeping force in Darfur, but cautioned that the world body's role would be smaller than some Security Council members want.

Tropical forest land underprotected

Almost all the world's tropical forests remain effectively unprotected, even though two-thirds have been designated for some sort of preservation over the past two decades, according to a report released Thursday.

The study of tropical forest management by the International Tropical Timber Organization surveyed 2 billion acres — two-thirds of the world's tropical forests — in 33 countries.

Several thousand refugees were reported Thursday to have fled into Kandahar from fierce fighting between Taliban insurgents and U.S.-led forces in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar province.

In the capital, Kabul, officials of the Organization for International Migration said that between 2,000 and 3,000 people had escaped from the continuing combat, fearful both of attacks by Taliban forces and further assaults by U.S. warplanes, which killed at least 15 civilians Monday when they strafed village compounds where Taliban fighters had taken shelter.

Several hundred people have been reported killed in the past week.

Also

The death toll in northern Thailand's worst floods in 60 years rose to 48 on Thursday with dozens still missing. Scientists and relief officials attributed the disaster to a rare collision of low-pressure areas from the Pacific and Indian oceans causing unusually heavy rain to fall on deforested hills and spawning deadly mudslides.

Compiled from The Associated Press, Reuters and The Washington Post